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US extends spamming lead

IT security firm Sophos has published a report that names and shames the top 12 spamming countries for the second quarter of 2010.

“The USA continues to be the number one spam polluter, piping out 15.2% of all global spam messages - an increase from 13.1% in the first quarter of 2010,” the company said.

New Zealand sits at 60th with just 0.18%. The figure is down in relation to Q1 2010, where New Zealand sat at 61 with 0.20%.

The UK accounted for 4.6% of the world's spam, which put it in fourth place compared with ninth earlier this year.

The top 12 spam relaying countries for April to June 2010:

USA - 15.2%

India - 7.7%

Brazil - 5.5%

UK - 4.6%

S Korea - 4.2%

France - 4.1%

Germany - 4.0%

Italy - 3.5%

Russia - 2.8%

Vietnam - 2.7%

Poland - 2.5%

Romania - 2.3%

Other - 40.9%

"It's sad to see spam relayed via compromised European computers on the rise - the UK, France, Italy and Poland have all crept up the rankings since the start of the year," said Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos.

"Financially-motivated criminals are controlling compromised zombie computers to not just launch spam campaigns, but also to steal identity and bank account information. It's an uphill struggle educating users about the dangers of clicking on links or attachments in spam mails, and that their computers may already be under the control of cybercriminals,” he added.